• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

What's the lowest speed cpu that windows xp can run on?

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

Skeen

Member
Joined
Oct 7, 2004
Location
Cincinnati
I have a problem with my litttle socket 754 shuttle box that sets my multi to 4. This means my 3000+ DTR is running at 860MHz. It seems to do well with normal windows crap but I notice a difference with cpu intensive apps. What's the slowest cpu you've heard of running WinXP?
 
I have ran it personally on the minimum microsoft says. It was on a 233mhz Pentium with 80mb of ram. I turned all the eye candy like themes and stuff off.
Here are the requirements
Code:
233 MHz CPU *
64 MB of RAM (may limit performance and some features) *
1.5 GB of available hard disk space *
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device
 
I've always heard about how bloated WinXP is but I, like you have, turned off all the eyecandy and most other crap.

To run on a 233MHz is crazy.
 
Lol, you'd be VERY unhappy running windows XP on a 233 mhz pentium mmx. Realistically, if you have a lot of memory, you can probably get away with running XP decently well on a 500 mhz range processor, but that won't be very fast. Anything much less is unusable.

If you are running a 500 mhz processor, or even a bit more (up to 1 ghz imo), you're much, much better off running 2K, or even 98 on a very slow machine. XP is just too much of a resource hog. The eye candy alone will eat up most of your cpu cycles.

I have a P133 laptop with 72MB RAM that really cannot run windows passibly well. I am currently running debian linux on it with icewm as a window manager, and it's pretty usable. Certainly not fast, but it's faster than Windows XP on a 500 mhz PC.

Also, remember that a socket 754 Athlon 64 running at 800 mhz is a LOT faster than a pentium III or K6-2 running at that same speed. I don't think a K6-2 can even run that fast, but what I mean is that the A64 just does a lot more per clock cycle. You can't really compare cpu power using just clock speed except between processors of the same architecture (like a P4 2.8 and a P4 3.0). Then there's that stupid Athlon rating system of numbers they pull out of their collective asses that have no connection to anything in the real world at all whatsoever. I wish they'd just put the real clock speeds on those.
 
MRD, I thought the athlon numbers were initially based on the intel equivalent that it ran faster than - perhaps because most home users didn't understand how efficiency was based on more than just clock speed.
 
Actually, it was officially based on speed relative to some AMD processor, as there were legal issues surrounding comparison to Intel in that fashion, but it was pretty clear that's what they were aiming at.

IMO though, the numbers have now become utterly meaningless.
 
i've seen WinXP Pro run great on a P3 450 with 192mbs of RAM. Funny thing is... it runs faster on that system than Win98 ever did! I'm not sure if it's how XP manages memory better or what... but it does run more efficiently than 98.
 
ehh i ran it on a celeron [pentium 2 series]
366 mhz 192mb slow ram.. too. DDR100? forgot. Now. did they even make DDR100?

blehh its too early in the morning *yawn*

it ran winxp fine. kinda slow compared to my current computer but it was 'fast' at the time. I even played ut on it. Of course, 24fps and the graphics were giving me horrific seisurez and stuff. when the walls keep changing colors between yellow and brown and green you know somethings wrong but whatever. :D it was playable. and yes playable enough to get a ton of headshots with a sniper rifle on zoom while running around in combat.
 
ati said:
I have ran it personally on the minimum microsoft says. It was on a 233mhz Pentium with 80mb of ram. I turned all the eye candy like themes and stuff off.
Here are the requirements
Code:
233 MHz CPU *
64 MB of RAM (may limit performance and some features) *
1.5 GB of available hard disk space *
Super VGA (800 x 600) or higher-resolution video adapter and monitor
CD-ROM or DVD drive
Keyboard and Microsoft Mouse or compatible pointing device


:bang head

OMG !!! I'm a Goof !!!

I just sent a co workers pc back to them w/win98 on it..... :bang head

I know win ME your required to have atleast a 500mhz cpu & she only had a 400mhz, so I let it go.

I didn't even check for XP !

:bang head
 
winme doesn't require a 500mhz cpu, more like a pentium 150.

amd's rating system for the athlons was initially based upon performance relative to a thunderbird. it would be nice to see amd adopt a model number system for the A64/sempron as intel does with their chips and amd does with their own opteron line.
 
IIRC, XP won't let you install onto less than a 3GB partition. Causes lots of problems with its requirements.
 
^ I actually bet that wouldn't be too bad. Enough RAM, and the dual processors would make a huge difference, especially down at that speed grade.

I'm posting right now from my 500MHz PIII laptop. It does have 512mb of RAM, and that helps, but it does get a little slow for CPU-intensive tasks, of course. Still very usable. 2K would be a little faster (I actually love how snappy that OS feels compared to XP), but XP tends to have a couple of features that I like. I use this for movies and music and such, and XP tends to do it just a bit better. It also looks nicer than 2K. *shrug*

If anything, I'd like to upgrade the HD. Where I really notice slowdown is whenever it needs to pull something from that 4200RPM beast.
 
My work machine is a P3 450 with 512MB RAM. I know..it's sad. It runs XP ok, enough to do some work on but not much else..lol
 
The 512 MB RAM makes a huge difference.

My mother uses a k6-2. Initially, it had 128mb ram and ran very slowly. It now has ~384, and it runs pretty well. Not what you'd call fast, but fine really.
 
I used to run Windows on an 866 MHZ viao with 384 ram and a 4200 ti. Thing ran perfectly. I was able to run WarCraft 3 FT, and Call of Duty SpeearHead with no real problems on decent graphics.
 
I am running XP on a 363 Mhz with 128 MB of RAM. It is my laptop that I use just to surf the web. It runs pretty decently with everything turned WAY down or off if possible.
 
Back